We discuss the problem of homotopy-type reconstruction of compact shapes $X\subset\mathbb{R}^N$ that are $\mathrm{CAT}(\kappa)$ in the intrinsic length metric. The reconstructed spaces are Vietoris–Rips complexes computed from a compact sample $S$, Hausdorff–close to the unknown shape $X$. Instead of the Euclidean metric on the sample, our reconstruction technique leverages a path-based metric to compute these complexes. As naturally emerging in the reconstruction framework, we also study the Gromov–Hausdorff topological stability and finiteness problem for general compact $\mathrm{CAT}(\kappa)$ spaces. Our techniques provide novel sampling conditions as an alternative to the existing and commonly used techniques using weak feature size and $\mu$–reach. In particular, we introduce a new parameter, called the restricted distortion, which is a generalization of the well-known global distortion of embedding. We show examples of Euclidean subspaces, for which the known parameters such as the reach, $\mu$–reach and weak features size vanish, whereas the restricted distortion is finite, making our reconstruction results applicable for such spaces.